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Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance [W:246, 565, *656*]

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Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

Simon W. Moon said:
Where's that claim made?
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Hello?

General Georges Hormiz Sada (aka Gewargis or George Hormis; Arabic: كوركيس هرمز ساده, Syriac: ܓܘܪܓܝܣ ܗܪܡܙ ܣܕܐ; born 1939?) is an Iraqi of ethnic Assyrian descent, an author, former Iraqi National Security Advisor and retired general officer of the Iraqi Air Force.
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Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

ocean515 said:
So you choose to feed the fire that surrounds you? Cool.
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Dr. Blix, welcome back to "LATE EDITION." Congratulations on the new book.

And one of the key points you make in the book, and we'll get right to it, is that the war really wasn't justified; that the inspections at the time a year ago were going well.

You write this: "I felt the armed action taken was not in line with what the Security Council had decided five months earlier. Had there been any denials of access, any cat-and-mouse play? No. Had the inspections been going well? Yes. True, they had not resolved any of the open disarmament issues, but in my view, they had gone much too well to be abandoned to justify war."

Transcript of the Interview with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and Dr. Hans Blix, Former Head of UNMOVIC

Transcript: Director General's CNN Interview - 21 March 2004
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

vesper said:
It reminds me much how the Roman Empire became right before the big fall. The people no longer had the stomach to fight and protect their interests. They got lazy too and left it to others which came back to bite them.
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We read different history books... mine said Roman society became the rich elite, small tenant farmers/craftsmen, and the serf/slave cast, none wanted to die for the Empire, the former because they were 'too important' and the latter two because it gained them nothing.

Those in power- politicians, generals and aristocrats- were so busy fighting for power they turned their backs on everything but pursuit of the throne or 'ambition'. They had a very arrogant worldview that saw every non-roman as barbarians, thus inferior.

The legions, once a symbol of Roman Might, became an Emperor maker or breaker... huge bribes to keep the Officers an ally, the men willing to kill their fellow citizens to make or remove an Emperor....

The masses that once flocked to the Eagle, even after a huge massacre such as Cannae, or Teutoburg Forest, now were disgusted by what that Eagle represented.
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

ChrisL said:
This certainly doesn't mean he was lying about WMD in Iraq. I'm not saying that I know one way or other, but when taking ALL of the evidence together, it is pretty hard to say that there wasn't some shady activity going on in Iraq in 2003, before the war. I think that anyone who just rules it out, while ignoring the evidence otherwise is kind of ignorant.
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Transcript of the Interview with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and Dr. Hans Blix, Former Head of UNMOVIC

HANS BLIX, FORMER U.N. CHIEF WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Well, I think it's clear that in March when the invasion took place the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart. And we had called attention to a number of the points.

One was that there was a tendency on the U.S. administration to say that anything that was unaccounted for existed, whether it was sarin, or mustard gas or anthrax.

Another one related to the case that Colin Powell presented to the Security Council about a site in which they held that there had been chemical weapons and that they had seen decontamination trucks. Our inspectors had been there and they had taken a lot of samples, and there was no trace of any chemicals or biological things. And the trucks that we had seen were water trucks.

And, of course, the more spectacular of all was what my friend Mohamed revealed in the Security Council, namely that the alleged contract by Iraq with Niger to import yellow cake, that is uranium oxide, that this was a forgery, and the document had been sitting with the CIA and their U.K. counterparts for a long while, and they had not discovered it. And I think it took the IAEA a day to discover that it was a forgery.

Transcript: Director General's CNN Interview - 21 March 2004
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

dad2three2001 said:
I know, those pesky details like CONservatives ALWAYS on the wrong side of history...Invasion of Iraq, for example, while ONLY 60% of Dems voted against Bush's war of choice, Bet 98% of the progressive caucus did :)
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A minor in history is, well, so minor. In any case,you've made a rookie mistake assuming I'm a conservative.:peace
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

Simon W. Moon said:
Do you realize that it was GWB who set the timeline for withdrawal of American troops, and not Obama? The agreement to withdraw troops from Iraq was reached in 2008.
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A complete withdrawal was never envisioned.:peace
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

dad2three2001 said:
Dr. Blix, welcome back to "LATE EDITION." Congratulations on the new book.

And one of the key points you make in the book, and we'll get right to it, is that the war really wasn't justified; that the inspections at the time a year ago were going well.

You write this: "I felt the armed action taken was not in line with what the Security Council had decided five months earlier. Had there been any denials of access, any cat-and-mouse play? No. Had the inspections been going well? Yes. True, they had not resolved any of the open disarmament issues, but in my view, they had gone much too well to be abandoned to justify war."

Transcript of the Interview with IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and Dr. Hans Blix, Former Head of UNMOVIC

Transcript: Director General's CNN Interview - 21 March 2004
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That is old from 2004.

How do you explain the stockpiles found in Syria? There is also this WikiLeaks report below. Of course, there was nothing conclusive, but trace evidence. I don't think any of us can say whether Saddam had chemical weapons or not. He had in the past, and he didn't hesitate to use them either.


WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results | Danger Room | WIRED
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

ChrisL said:
Here is a VERY interesting article that I urge you all to read. It gives points from both perspectives, that there were or were not WMD in Iraq. It certainly seems plausible to me.

Did Syria Receive Its Chemical Weapons from Saddam? - The Wire
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There WAS Reagan gave it to them, but it had LONG since degraded

1/17/2005


U.S. found no evidence WMD moved from Iraq
No signs that weapons were smuggled, intelligence officials say

But intelligence and congressional officials say they have not seen any information — never “a piece,” said one — indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria, Jordan or elsewhere.

Officials: No signs WMD moved from Iraq - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - Conflict in Iraq | NBC News

The report's first conclusion points to widespread flaws in the October 2002 NIE, and attributes those flaws to failure by analysts in the intelligence community:

Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

Subsequent conclusions fault the intelligence community for failing to adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties that underlay the NIE's conclusions, and for succumbing to "group think," in which the intelligence community adopted untested (and, in hindsight, unwarranted) assumptions about the extent of Iraq's WMD stockpiles and programs.

Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

THE ACTUAL REPORT

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf

Investigators laid the possibility to rest last year. Charles Duelfer, the White House’s hand-picked W.M.D. investigator, found in a 92-page report that “no information gleaned from questioning Iraqis supported the possibility” that Saddam moved WMD to Syria.

There is no “evidence” that shows the Duelfer report was wrong.

Powerline Pushes WMD Conspiracy Theories | ThinkProgress
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

ChrisL said:
Certainly, I would feel much better about the whole fiasco if there was some evidence that there had been chemical weapons over there, even if he wasn't planning on using them.
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That is exactly what was found there. Sarin, most notably.
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

Simon W. Moon said:
Do you realize that it was GWB who set the timeline for withdrawal of American troops, and not Obama? The agreement to withdraw troops from Iraq was reached in 2008.
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This guy has it exactly right.:peace

Iraq veteran: This is not what my friends fought and died for - The Washington Post

We are reaping the instability and increased threat to U.S. interests that we have sown through the failure of our endgame in Iraq and our indecisiveness in Syria. There is a clear lesson here for those contemplating a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Having given al-Qaeda a new lease on life in the Middle East, will we provide another base where it began, in Afghanistan and Pakistan?


This is not the end state my friends fought for and died for.
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

ChrisL said:
That is old from 2004.

How do you explain the stockpiles found in Syria? There is also this WikiLeaks report below. Of course, there was nothing conclusive, but trace evidence. I don't think any of us can say whether Saddam had chemical weapons or not. He had in the past, and he didn't hesitate to use them either.


WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results | Danger Room | WIRED
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Got it, You'll hold onto myths, distortions and LIES about WMD's


First: Think about it for a second. Strategically and militarily, it made no sense for Saddam to transfer his weapons of mass destruction to Syria. Saddam worked on acquiring WMD for a reason: to stave off an invasion and hold on to power.

Just listen to a defeated Saddam for a second. In a post-invasion interview, Saddam admitted that he had been bluffing about his WMD. This is actually case-closed for the conspiracy theories about his weapons transfers.

No, Syria Doesn’t Have Saddam’s Chemical Weapons | Danger Room | WIRED


Don’t Believe the WMD Hype in ‘SEAL Target Geronimo’

Start with all that Iraqi WMD that U.S. forces found. Pfarrer gasps over an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit’s 2003 discovery of an artillery shell filled with the nerve agent sarin, part of an early homemade bomb. To Pfarrer, that bomb would have “spread a mortal, invisible cloud over a dozen city blocks” where “death would have come quickly for ten thousand Iraqi civilians living near the airport and three thousand coalition troops stationed at nearby Camp Victory.” If two of those sarin-laced bombs went off in a crowded football stadium, it would have caused more casualties than “those suffered by the United States during the entire Vietnam War.” His emphasis.

Absolutely none of this is plausible. You’re talking about a piece of steel that needs to survive being fired out of an artillery piece, and then burst apart by explosives in order to disseminate the chemicals inside. Much of the chemical material is destroyed in the process.

Don’t Believe the WMD Hype in ‘SEAL Target Geronimo’ | Danger Room | WIRED
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

dad2three2001 said:
There WAS Reagan gave it to them, but it had LONG since degraded

1/17/2005


U.S. found no evidence WMD moved from Iraq
No signs that weapons were smuggled, intelligence officials say

But intelligence and congressional officials say they have not seen any information — never “a piece,” said one — indicating that WMD or significant amounts of components and equipment were transferred from Iraq to neighboring Syria, Jordan or elsewhere.

Officials: No signs WMD moved from Iraq - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - Conflict in Iraq | NBC News

The report's first conclusion points to widespread flaws in the October 2002 NIE, and attributes those flaws to failure by analysts in the intelligence community:

Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.

Subsequent conclusions fault the intelligence community for failing to adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties that underlay the NIE's conclusions, and for succumbing to "group think," in which the intelligence community adopted untested (and, in hindsight, unwarranted) assumptions about the extent of Iraq's WMD stockpiles and programs.

Senate Report on Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

THE ACTUAL REPORT

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf

Investigators laid the possibility to rest last year. Charles Duelfer, the White House’s hand-picked W.M.D. investigator, found in a 92-page report that “no information gleaned from questioning Iraqis supported the possibility” that Saddam moved WMD to Syria.

There is no “evidence” that shows the Duelfer report was wrong.

Powerline Pushes WMD Conspiracy Theories | ThinkProgress
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All of these say basically the same things, that they didn't FIND anything. Not finding conclusive evidence does not mean they never existed. There is other evidence that I posted that shows plenty of evidence. Apparently, there are stock piles of weapons that have been RECENTLY discovered in Syria for which there is NO explanation. Where do you think those weapons came from? These are stockpiles that the government has allegedly been using against it's people.
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

Some people will never, ever acknowledge that the Iraq War was driven by a neoconservative agenda that preceded 9/11. They'll go to their graves thinking that the Bush Administration was simply duped by faulty intelligence.

Project for the New American Century - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"New Pearl Harbor"
Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor"

...

PNAC role in promoting invasion of Iraq
Commentators from divergent parts of the political spectrum––such as Democracy Now! and American Free Press, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams and former Republican Congressmen Pete McCloskey and Paul Findley––voiced their concerns about the influence of the PNAC on the decision by President George W. Bush to invade Iraq.[46][47] Some have regarded the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton, which urged him to embrace a plan for "the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power,"[12] and the large number of members of PNAC appointed to the Bush administration as evidence that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a foregone conclusion.[48]

The television program Frontline, broadcast on PBS, presented the PNAC's letter to President Clinton as a notable event in the leadup to the Iraq war.[49]

Media commentators have found it significant that signatories to the PNAC's January 16, 1998 letter to President Clinton (and some of its other position papers, letters, and reports) included such later Bush administration officials as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams.[29][37][40][49]
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Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

Jack Hays said:
A complete withdrawal was never envisioned.:peace
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On November 17, 2008, US and Iraqi officials signed a Security Agreement, often referred to as a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), stating that "All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011." The agreement also called for all U.S. combat forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities "no later than June 30, 2009."

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/122074.pdf
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

dad2three2001 said:
THAT REAGAN SUPPLIED, AND WAS USELESS BY THAT POINT

Don’t Believe the WMD Hype in ‘SEAL Target Geronimo’ | Danger Room | WIRED
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Again, this states that this person in the article believes that the evidence found was inconclusive. There are also satellite photos which show a lot of activity around that time with huge convoys heading to the borders with Lebanon and Syria, and there are witnesses who claim that there WERE WMDs.

To try to say that there were definitely NOT WMD in Iraq before the invasion is just displaying ignorant partisanship. There MAY have been WMDs, and there IS evidence to suggest that.
 
Re: Iraq insurgents take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

AJiveMan said:
Yeah well, look who's doing the patrolling now, one fight and they laid their arms down and ran. :lol:
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This guy has it exactly right.:peace

Iraq veteran: This is not what my friends fought and died for - The Washington Post

We are reaping the instability and increased threat to U.S. interests that we have sown through the failure of our endgame in Iraq and our indecisiveness in Syria. There is a clear lesson here for those contemplating a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Having given al-Qaeda a new lease on life in the Middle East, will we provide another base where it began, in Afghanistan and Pakistan?


This is not the end state my friends fought for and died for.
 
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